Under Expectation

Essays

Sep 3

When I was younger, if I saw a show called DTF St. Louis in my queue, I would have watched it right away. As an elder, I passed on it for a long time because I thought it would be something else. It was nothing like I thought it was going to be. The best single word to describe the show is sad. It made me think it’s better to have no or low expectations of everything and everyone to allow for the possibility of a pleasant surprise.

It would cure many relationship issues by removing the pedestal we put the early version of our partners on. If every day were truly a new day, and we didn’t expect them to do exactly what they did yesterday, maybe things would be smoother. People aren’t robots; they have emotions and fears that make each day an adventure. And how can you have an expectation of emotion?

I always think of the Seinfeld episode where George decides to do the opposite of everything he has ever done. He changes his sandwich order and approaches a woman with deadpan honesty about his current employment and living situation, both seemingly unattractive. She was into it. He dropped an expectation of success and just lived.

In business, I’ve always expected people to work as hard as I did, or I would cast them off as lazy. I was wrong. I mean, some were lazy, checked out, or generally just personally disengaged, but not all of them. I like to overwork. I like to do too much. I like to outperform. Just because I like those things doesn’t make people the opposite. I expected too much.

I was listening to a podcast with my son in the car the other day, and the guest was talking about how he had gotten so low that he was living in his car, had no job, and was crying alone in the rain, but from inside his car. Another man knocked on his car window in the pouring rain and asked if he could sleep under his car to escape the storm. My son and I both acknowledged that things can always get worse.

My mom used to make me breakfast in bed every morning when I was a tween and a teen. Occasionally, she would have to go to work early and would tell me the night before that I needed to make my own breakfast. Sometimes, it bothered me. She was working all the time and had cancer, and I was miffed because I wasn’t getting maple and brown sugar oatmeal in bed with orange juice. Brat.